3. DEA Forges Alliance
With Women Legislators Group to Wage War on Club Drugs, Terror

The DEA kicked off a joint
campaign against "club drugs," such as MDMA (ecstasy) and the "narco-terror
connection" with a little-known but politically potent group of women legislators
at a May 23 press conference in Washington, followed by similar press conferences
in states across the country. The "Shoulder to Shoulder" campaign
is touted as educating youth and parents about the dangers of club drugs,
but could have more serious political ramifications. The campaign
will peak in November with a national conference where the DEA will assist
the National Foundation for Women Legislators (http://www.womenlegislators.org),
a more than six decades old group currently representing more than 3,000
female members of state legislatures, in drafting "model legislation" on
club drugs and possibly even narco-terrorism.

"We have joined forces at
a unique time in our history -- when Americans are focused on strengthening
our country," said DEA head Asa Hutchinson at the inaugural news conference.
"After the September 11th attacks, Americans came to understand as never
before the kind of destruction drug money funds. The consequences
of drug abuse are far greater than the individual or even the family or
community," he said.

"But our fight against drugs
is more than a battle against traffickers. It's a battle against misinformation
-- the kind that tells our youth that ecstasy and other club drugs are
somehow safe. It's the perception that so long as they drink enough
water or take small amounts of ecstasy, no harm will come," Hutchinson
continued.

"That can be a deadly distortion.
Just two days ago, an 18-year-old California girl died after taking ecstasy
at her senior prom," Hutchinson said. "The girl had told her sister
she planned to take the drug. Her sister told her to be careful.
And that's the misperception with ecstasy -- that it's different, safer,
better than other illegal drugs. Today, we stand together so that
no teenager will ever stand alone when they face that kind of misinformation."

For a more nuanced look at
the dangers of MDMA, one can turn to last week's report from the British
parliamentary Home Affairs Select Committee on drug policy, which recommended
lessening penalties for the popular drug and instituting harm reduction
measures. During its 10-month inquiry, the committee turned to Professor
John Henry, Professor of Accident and Emergency Medicine, Imperial College
School of Medicine at St. Mary's Hospital in London:

"Quite clearly it causes
about 20 something deaths per year [out of an estimated 50-100 million
doses consumed in Britain each year], and that is very small in terms of
the large number of users. You could even use the word minimal for
the short-term risks of ecstasy when you compare them with those of cocaine
and heroin. Addictiveness is low. The other thing is that there
is emerging evidence that it causes damage to memory processes. There
are epidemiological comparisons of users versus non-users and even more
recently we have seen studies which have followed up ecstasy users for
a year and they have shown that aspects of memory function deteriorate
during that year. Long-term use might lead to considerable impairment
of memory," Professor Henry testified.

The select committee also
cited a March 2000 Police Foundation inquiry, which relied on the Royal
College of Psychiatrists' Faculty of Substance Abuse to evaluate ecstasy's
harmfulness. The report observed that "population safety comparisons
suggest that Ecstasy may be several thousand times less dangerous than
heroin... there is little evidence of craving or withdrawal compared with
the opiates and cocaine." The report continued: "Although deaths
from ecstasy are highly publicised, it probably kills fewer than 10 people
each year which, though deeply distressing for the surviving relatives
and friends, is a small percentage of the many thousands of people who
use it each week. Nor is it always clear whether the deaths are caused
by ecstasy itself... or the circumstances surrounding its use... in many
cases they are due to environmental aspects of the dance club scene, particularly
overcrowding, overheating, poor availability of cool-out rooms and
restrictions on or the high cost of drinks.")

But rhetoric like Hutchinson's
flowed across the country. "Our youth are led to believe that 'club
drugs' like ecstasy are harmless," Illinois State Sen. Kathy Parker (R-North
Brook) told a Springfield press conference the same day. "The grim
facts show otherwise."

In New Jersey, meanwhile,
Assemblywoman Clare Farragher (R-Monmouth) told her local "Shoulder to
Shoulder" press conference she wanted to raise awareness of the link between
drugs and terrorism. "Long before September 11, New Jersey faced
increasing illegal drug problems, but in the past eight months the nation
has learned how drug habits often put money into the pockets of terrorist
organizations," she said.

In Washington, Robin Read,
president and CEO of NFWL, lauded the partnership with the DEA as "one
of the most innovative programs the NFWL has embarked upon in its 64 year
history. It's an important step towards correcting the growing misconceptions
that Ecstasy and other Club Drugs are harmless," said Read.

Drug prevention is one thing,
but the alliance between NFWL and the DEA could have a national impact
with the model legislation plan. The model would be available to
state legislatures across the country as a handy way to express their concern
over club drugs. While the NFWL says that it "does not take ideological
positions on any current issue," its alliance with the DEA -- a highly
invested protagonist with rigidly ideological positions in the roiling
debate over drug policy -- raises concerns that the group has embraced
the DEA's drug war without examining the many alternative approaches embraced
abroad, where law enforcement is leavened with a significant harm reduction
component. A conversation with one of the NFWL's main movers in "Shoulder
to Shoulder" did little to lesson those concerns, but did leave the impression
that a tiny opening for differing viewpoints may exist.

DRCNet spoke with NFWL private
sector co-chair Joy Westrum, who heads Second Chance, a California drug
treatment program. According to Westrum, the effort will build a
network, "a very, very powerful union" between the DEA and women legislators
concerned with youth addiction rates. Together, they will craft a
two-pronged attack, said Westrum. "The first prong is to attack the
so-called club drugs and the second prong is to make the public aware of
the connection between narco-terrorism and drug use," Westrum said.
"When you do drugs, you are wittingly or not supporting terrorist activities
around the world."

The campaign will include
public service ads about the dangers of club drugs, said Westrum, but would
also include a strong legislative component. "We'll be looking for
effective model legislation and other drug-related legislation," she told
DRCNet. "We'll try to shut down some of these rave establishments
that house these horrible activities," she said.

The campaign will also look
for effective drug treatment programs. "We need to take a good hard
look at programs that aren't working -- like methadone maintenance programs,"
she said. "They are not a solution. Instead we need religious-based
programs, prison-based programs that don't use alternative drugs."

When queried about alternatives
to a law enforcement-heavy approach to club drugs, Westrum scoffed.
"We are not interested in harm minimization," she said. "Harm reduction
says we're not clever enough to handle the problem. Clean needles
aren't the solution. Kids need to focus on education and the creative,
productive things in life," Westrum explained. "That doesn't involve
becoming addicted to any type of drug."

Besides, said Westrum, harm
reduction is a front for legalizers. "George Soros is behind the
legalization of heroin around the world," she told DRCNet. "People
like that are trying to hide their agenda, starting out on other gradients,
but that's not the direction the country wants to go," she said.

As for reports such as the
Home Affairs Select Committee that argue ecstasy is relatively harmless,
Westrum responded, "That is the fallacy we are fighting against.
We have to educate on actual physiological harm that is being done.
It's not true that it's not harmful."

But when asked about opening
the November conference to outsiders or otherwise hearing from the drug
reform movement, Westrum evinced a guarded willingness to listen.
"If drug reformers want to talk, communication is the way," she said.

Some drug reformers are already
talking about talking to the NFWL. If they want to do some real harm
reduction, they need to get moving.

The NFWL, the nonprofit educational
arm of the National Organization for Women Legislators, has a corporate
partnership program. According to the NFWL web site, among the corporations
with which NFWL has partnerships are ALZA Pharmaceuticals, AstraZeneca
Pharmaceuticals, Brown and Williamson Tobacco, Corrections Corporation
of America, Enron, Guinness Stout, Merck Pharmaceuticals, Novartis
Pharmaceuticals Corporation, Philip Morris, SmithKline, Westrum's Second
Chance drug treatment chain and Wyeth Ayerst Laboratories.

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